Project information

Project financing:

Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung

Abstract in another language

In the last decade, the notion of uncertainty has gained prominence in anthropological debates. So has the debate on future. Yet, the conceptualisation of uncertainty has barely been linked to the future(s) and its temporal relations. This lack of linkage seems astonishing in so far as uncertainty relates closely to the unpredictability of the future. Uncertain situations engender ambivalent experiences and affects towards an unknown future embracing hope, desire and opportunity as well as fear, despair and suffering. This introduction scrutinises the current state of the discussion on uncertainty and we seek to inspire further thinking about matters of time. To this end, we present the contributions of this special issue in the introductory text wherever they link to the debate. After first highlighting the key points of the concept of uncertainty, the introduction discusses in the second part the abovementioned four theses about future(s) that seem relevant to us for the study of uncertainty. Finally, we conclude by presenting our ideas on the interaction of uncertainty and future(s).